1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a three-dimensional (3D) image display system and method for automatically providing content that is consistent with hardware characteristics of a 3D image display such as a super multi-view image display.
2. Discussion of Related Art
With the development of wires/wireless wideband communication technology, there is an increasing demand for high quality realistic image content. Three dimensional (3D) TVs using binocular parallax were not widely used due to the inconvenience of wearing glasses and lack of content. A glassesless 3D display (an autostereoscopic display) has been suggested as an image implementation technology for addressing the limitation of a 3D display with glasses (a stereoscopic 3D display). As a glassesless 3D stereographic image representation method, a multi-view image technology capable of reproducing motion parallax has been actively developed for user convenience.
A multi-view 3D display provides a 3D image having binocular parallax and motion parallax information to an observer in front of the display by arranging a finite number of 3D viewpoint images on a space by using Time-Multiplexing or Space-Multiplexing. Such a glassesless multi-view 3D display may use a parallax barrier, a lenticular lens, or a linear light source to perform parallax separation.
An autostereoscopic multi-view 3D display among current mainstream commercial 3D products is designed to have a distance between adjacent viewing zones larger than a size of a pupil of an observer. However, such a multi-view 3D display may cause an observer fatigue in terms of human factors. A research result has been found showing that fatigue may be reduced by designing a distance between adjacent viewing zones to be smaller than the size of the pupil of an observer so that a point of accommodation of one eye coincides with a point of convergence of both eyes. A display adopting this concept is referred to as a super multi-view 3D display. In particular, a multi-view 3D display having a distance between adjacent viewing zones equal to or smaller than the size of the pupil of an observer is referred to as a high density multi-view 3D (HD-MV3D) display.
Accordingly, the use of autostereoscopic multi-view 3D displays and super multi-view 3D displays has recently increased, which has brought about a need for methods of supplying content that can be used in these display devices.
However, a rendering method of a super multi-view image for multi-view or super multi-view displays varies according to corresponding resolutions, numbers of views, viewing zone, and multiplexing methods. Therefore, the current technology reconstructs multi-view or super multi-view image content into a 3D scene according to the type and scheme thereof and detailed settings of a multi-view or a super multi-view image display, and then generates exclusive content for each multi-view or super multi-view image display. As such, there is a difficulty in supplying multi-view or super multi-view content and inconvenience of a user having to use multi-view or super multi-view content corresponding to a detailed specification of a multi-view or a super multi-view display.